I bought two of these from a shop as that was all that they had for the 775 socket.

I took them home and got the first one out of the box, looked at it and chucked it in the trash. The other one went in the bin without even opening the box.

(The shop in question has a no-refunds policy so there was no point going back - at least they were cheap.)

Why did I do that? They do not mount onto the motherboard in the same was as do the ones that Intel supply if you buy a boxed processor and it would not be possible to fit one of these devices to my motherboard without removing it from the case. That is just a broken idea.

I can understand why you might want a bolt through mounting if you are fitting a huge and heavy heat-sink and fan onto an overclocked quad-core but this unit can only be used to cool dual core processors and it does not need anything other than the standard press-in from above mount.

I took them home and got the first one out of the box, looked at it and chucked it in the trash. The other one went in the bin without even opening the box.

(The shop in question has a no-refunds policy so there was no point going back - at least they were cheap.)

Why did I do that? They do not mount onto the motherboard in the same was as do the ones that Intel supply if you buy a boxed processor and it would not be possible to fit one of these devices to my motherboard without removing it from the case. That is just a broken idea.

I can understand why you might want a bolt through mounting if you are fitting a huge and heavy heat-sink and fan onto an overclocked quad-core but this unit can only be used to cool dual core processors and it does not need anything other than the standard press-in from above mount.
John Peter O'connor7 Sept. 2012

Overall: 5

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Comments

Only an idiot would buy a heatsink and fan without first checking how it fits to the motherboard. Personally I find those plastic intel clips are pretty feeble and if you don't want to remove your motherboard to fit it then don't buy one with this sort of fitting. I don't know why people are so scared of taking a motherboard out of a pc for this sort of thing, it's a 1/2 hour job at most and not difficult.

Report abuse3 of 3 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?

A simple 30 second search (or a look in a system building manual, or even a basic understanding of the subject) would provide you with the information that there are two (basic) types of 775 CPU heatsink/fan; the plastic feet pushdown clips and screwed into a backplate.

The plastic clips are horrible, it really is a lottery whether or not they'll break (there's a good reason you used to be able to find piles of the official Intel coolers on ebay for a couple of quid; even experienced system builders would throw them to one side and use an aftermarket cooler!). These backplated coolers are far superior, even if you are replacing an existing clip-in fan (the extra work is worth the reduced hassle/lottery of a snapped pin; IMHO).

This isn't a job for everyone (I can see why some people would be put off), but if you're comfortable enough removing the case and fitting a new heatsink/fan then three's no reason you can't add a backplated cooler. Removing the motherboard is usually as simple as disconnecting all the external cables, remove the internal PSU cables from the motherboard (and possibly from your graphics card), remove any PCI/PCI Express cards from the case/mobo, detach the hard drives/optical drive cables, and then remove the 6 or 7 (ish) screws holding the motherboard to the case (easily identifiable, as they will nearly always be rounded off screws surrounded by a small circular plate on the motherboard. You'll find the obvious ones in the corners, there may be another two; one along each edge, and one in the middle; once you know what they look like they are simple to find!).

Screw the cooler to the backplate (checking it has a spread of thermal paste; which it almost certainly will if new!), and then just reverse the process above.

1/2 an hour is a perfectly reasonable time-frame for someone who is doing it for the first time (and being careful not to lose/damage anything).

Report abuse1 of 1 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?

Bah ! these are great, the stock intel coolers are crap and awkward to fit anyway, this is much better and much cooler too for a low low price, if you have to take out the motherboard to fit it then take it out and don`t be such a crybaby eh ?